Summary & Goals

Asteroids are becoming a real threat to humanity. There are thousands of asteroids big enough to eradicate all kind of biological life on earth orbiting around the sun, and we know barely nothing about them.

The Astex Project plans to study the orbit of one of the most potentially hazardous asteroids for planet Earth, the 99942 Apophis. This asteroid is expected to orbit near Earth in 2029, at a distance of about 140.000 km from our planet (distance between the Moon and Earth is 384.000 km). Apophis had ranked 4 on Turin Scale and 1’10 on Palerm Scale. Calculating Apophis orbit with the existent data gives us not enough accuracy. Our aim would be to collect precise data by attaching a device onto its surface, which would transmit us its exact orbit.

But Apophis would only be the first experimental use of the project. We will try to develop a procedure that would enable us to study all kind of astral bodies describing trajectories which we don’t really know. This could be applied to impact threats, solar system less-known bodies, and comets approaching once every 60-70 years such as Halley.

If this method proves useful, it would also serve as a platform to insert scientific gadgets on space bodies and conduct soil analysing tests, radiation analysis and any other experiment that could be applied to space exploration.

Also, we must explain we call our space device a “satellite”. Though its final goal is to remain attached to the asteroid’s surface, it has to develop a series of orbital procedures precisely, first around the earth and then transferring into a solar orbit to approach the asteroid. This is the reason why we refer to it as a satellite.

Goals

With our project we aim to achieve the following goals:

• 1. Solving the problem that means having big astronomical bodies orbiting near the Earth with barely no information about their composition and their orbits.

  2. Enabling a new way of exploring the space and its characteristics by analyzing asteroids and comets from inside.

  3. Ensuring a better understanding of our space environment and developing new security methods to protect the human race.

  4. Creating a new platform that would serve as an additional resource of science investigation, adding it to the exploration processes that are actually taking place.

We are fully aware that this project may not be sufficient to fulfill all these requirements completely, but we believe it can mean a step-forward towards them.